Allen K. Lair

Danger: Unexploded Minds

Behringer DEQ-2496 Digital Equalizer (and Creative X-Fi Titanium) Review

Aug 12

Posted by EarnieShoes in Music Related | No Comments

There are already several good reviews on this mastering equalizer so I won’t go into intricate detail about how all the menus work and the myriad options available but instead just give my impressions as a musician and a home studio recording artist.

Introduction

Although it can be used as an outboard effects processor like any other effects processor, that’s not what I’m using it for since I already have plenty of parametric and graphic control of my individual instruments both on the mixing console and VSTs on the digital side.  I got it on e-Bay for about a quarter of its retail price so even if it was absolutely horrible I wouldn’t be out too much.  What I got it for was what it was mainly meant for: mastering final mixdowns to the final two-track recording destined for CD.

In the process of getting this EQ I realized the digital inputs of my multitrack recording card were coaxial S/PDIF only and my two track card (playback only) maxed out at 48kHz where everything else is 96kHz/24-bit.  I was doing my final mixdowns as analog straight from the stereo master outs of the console into two spare 96kHz inputs on the fancy multitrack card so the two track card was strictly just that; a two-track playback device.  All that to say I ended up getting a Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium.  Quite a mouthful.  It may prove useful as an outboard effects processor as it has several dedicated effects processors on the board but again that’s not why I got it.  I got it solely because it wasn’t outrageously expensive and has dedicated 96kHz/24-bit optical S/PDIF inputs and outputs for direct digital connection to the mastering EQ that only has optical S/PDIF in/out and AES/EBU.  None of the AES/EBU cards available are within what my wife would not kill me for spending on.  One other reason is that the digital input (or any other) can be pass-thru monitored.  This makes the card a match made in heaven for my setup so I can A/B the mixdown right at the console by just hooking up the output of the card to the 2-track monitor input of the console and switch back and forth between the stereo master (not through the equalizer) and through the card (what is actually being recorded through the equalizer).

The Equalizer is now also the two-track DAC going directly digital into the computer.  Time will tell if they are as good as the DACs on the multitrack card but so far they seem transparent with the EQ in full bypass although my first impression is that they may be just slightly thinner (or less “warm”) sounding with no equalization or processing done by the DEQ-2496.  Okay enough of the digital mumbo jumbo and connection nonsense.  How does it sound?

The Equalizers

The graphic equalizer is much better than what I expected and am used to, even with VSTs.  The adjustments can be extremely subtle and very narrow.  Emphasizing one frequency band does exactly that.  If you pull up one band, only that 1/3 octave band comes up with no side-band emphasis or de-emphasis that you seem to always get.  The controls do take some getting used to but once you get the hang of how they work it’s pretty intuitive.  I just wish they had developed MIDI sys-ex software for controlling it from the computer.  The on-screen display is big for a 1U rack unit and very well laid out but it’s still only 1U high by about 3 inches or so.  Finding the bands or band groups that need adjustment is very easy.  One thing I found handy was defining a “hump” in the general spot of interest and then moving it back and forth to find just the right spot and then fine tuning it further from there.  Very cool and very quick.  Way way faster than a standard equalizer with traditional sliders.

Although I’ll mainly use the graphic equalizer (“GEQ” on the front panel), I was very pleasantly surprised by the parametric equalizer.  I have a recent recording that needed just a little emphasis on the very high end and the parametric equalizer was actually more helpful for that task.  Here again the controls are very intuitive for a small screen (the screen is very high resolution).  I was able to define a gradual curve around 8kHz to 20kHz that really added some dazzle to the cymbals that seemed a bit dead before.  This same recording also needed just a very slight emphasis of the saddle where the bass was sitting between the kick and snare as well as the kick drum.  Most other equalizers would just muddy the bass and kick trying to emphasize both without affecting each other significantly.  It was very easy to add a slight umph to the bass and some snap to the kick without creating a boomy sounding mix.  This recording will be on my next CD “Drift” that I hope to release sometime this winter or spring of next year.  We’ll see how busy everything else keeps me.

Other Processing Features

This unit is not just an equalizer.  It also has a very adjustable “stereo width” processor.  It does indeed widen the stereo field the little I’ve played with it (very noticeably at its widest setting) but I didn’t like the resulting sound using it.  The stereo expansion was pretty neat but sounded a bit too thin.  Playing with it might yield better results but I imagine this is more meant for live usage than studio recording.  The width processor interface is very intuitive but I don’t know if I’ll use it that much.  We’ll see.  It has a very capable compressor/expander and limiter that I’m looking forward to trying with my next recording.  I used it on a drum track just for testing and it really fattened up the low end.  Most of my mixdowns either have no compression/expansion at all on the final mix (individual tracks often do though) or very minimal software compression of the final recording I’ve never really been fond of if used beyond subtle compression but I don’t have many good VSTs for that except the Vintage-64 that is downright amazing as an individual instrument track compressor.  It also has a “feedback destroyer” function I’m told works well but I don’t really need it as I only use it in a studio setting where the big expensive sensitive condenser mics are well insulated from the control room monitors.  The control room also being my living room and the studio being my basement :)   Once I have a chance I am going to try using a vocal condenser mic in the “control room” just to see how well it works and update this section when I get the chance.  The unit also has a very configurable stereo delay but I have no need for it and haven’t used it at all.

Realtime Spectrum Analyzer

Most spectrum analyzer displays I’ve seen on outboard hardware are pretty useless.  They might look neat and give a general level indication, that’s about all they’re good for.  This unit has a dedicated realtime spectrum analyzer that is very high resolution and has several different setups including a neat retro Vu-meter display.  You can adjust the response speed, the peak indicator lag, adjust the input level and display level, as well as what input feeds it.  I’ve already found it very useful in mixing down verifying my final mix is flat when I want it flat and punchy when I want it punchy and airy high when I want it airy high.  Very well done, especially compared to anything else I’ve seen except for well done computer software displays (one of which I’m responsible for if I do say so myself :) ) or dedicated spectrum analyzers that cost thousands of dollars.

Further notes on the X-Fi Titanium

Back to the Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium for a bit.  While I have no experience with this card as a gaming sound card that it’s mostly geared towards, it is a very capable poor man’s master recording card with digital optical S/PDIF inputs and outputs at 96kHz/24-bit, real time monitoring (that works and is easy to configure not like some cards).  I have no opinion on the 7.1 analog outputs other than the stereo out to the console two track inputs.  In that respect it is utterly transparent.  Of course a breakout to XLR or 1/4-inch TRS would be nice, the 1/8th-inch stereo to twin 1/4-inch TRS breakout right at the card I’m using provides a very quiet monitor out to the console using short good quality cables.  A/B-ing test tracks of the raw stereo out and stereo-to-eq in bypass-to card S/PDIF in-to console 2-track analog in were absolutely transparent.  I really have to hand it to Creative regarding their mixer software.  Finally somebody got it right.  Everything makes sense and is easy to use.  As a bonus it actually looks pretty cool too :)   My M-Audio Delta 1010LT mixer software while usable and improved upon from the initial release, is still confusing and clumsy to use.  It also has several effects processors built in and the software mixer is designed very much like a mixing console with the effects processors configurable very much like they would be in the much more expensive Cakewalk Sonar.  Very very well done Creative.  One thing that doesn’t make much sense is the digital input never shows the current bit rate/depth even though it works just fine.  Maybe I wasn’t doing something right.  I know it’s at 96/24 though since it’s easy to see on the equalizer and SoundForge reports it correctly.  My final word on this card is that I’m very very impressed.  It was easy to set up and the ASIO drivers worked flawlessly with SoundForge and Cakewalk Sonar.  That’s what I bought it for and nothing else.  I may not even use the other analog outs.  The software is great, the effects are great, the equalizer is great, the digital I/O is completely transparent.  Perfect.  I wouldn’t use it for analog mastering simply because number one that’s not what it was designed for and number two it doesn’t have any XLR or 1/4-inch TRS inputs.  The last thing I found impressive were the ASIO drivers that worked right out of the box with both SoundForge and Cakewalk Sonar without any special messing around with settings trying to force them to work.  They all work at 96kHz/24-bit side-by-side with the M-Audio Delta 1010LT with no problems.

Behringer Ultra-Curve Pro DEQ-2496

Pros:

Easy to use interface with a very big screen for a 1U rack unit.  Transparent used as a DAC for digital mastering.  Graphic and Parametric equalizers are beyond configurable all the way from subtle to in-your-face adjustments.  Good connectivity options for such an inexpensive unit: optical S/PDIF in/out, AES/EBU in/out XLR in and XLR/TRS in/out.  Digital input and output supports 96kHz/24-bit.  Very nice real time spectrum analyzer display that is actually useful not just eye candy.  Inexpensive for a unit with so many features and quality.

Cons:

Stereo width, Dynamic Equalier and Feedback Destroyer really only useful in live environments.  No 192kHz support.  No remote control software.  No digital coaxial S/PDIF inputs/outputs.  No 1/4-inch TRS inputs (only outputs).  Before I got the soundcard I had to make XLR to TRS cables since I had to use one of the console AUX outs that only have TRS connections.

Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium

Pros:

PCIe 1x interface.  96kHz/24-bit input and output.  Real-time monitoring.  Fantastic software for a consumer soundcard.  ASIO drivers worked flawlessly right out of the box without any farting around with settings.  Pretty impressive for a consumer soundcard.

Cons:

No breakouts for higher-quality analog XLR or TRS connections.  No word clock in/out.  Granted all these are options found on cards geared specifically towards professional recording, so in that light there are no cons.

Nice rack!

Jul 12

Posted by EarnieShoes in Construction | No Comments

Okay get your mind out of the gutter.  I just thought I’d post a quick blog on the rack I built for the small amount of rack equipment I have for my personal studio.  I just couldn’t sacrifice $300+ for a nice metal studio rack, and considering it is only going to live in the studio, a nice wooden rack built with $50 worth of materials nicely fits the bill.  It’s not meant for gigging – if that’s what you need a rack for, spend the money – but plenty solid enough to scoot around the studio, and it’s designed with the possibility of putting casters on the bottom later on.  I had a big 16U rack that I had built out of scrap wood before we moved to Virginia, but it was ugly so I threw it out when we moved.

A rack is basically a box with inset rails for mounting studio equipment.  To build this box, you’ll need some basic tools, so if you don’t have any, especially a table saw, it may be just as easy on your pocketbook to just buy a pre-made rack, unless you plan on using the tools later on.  You’ll need a table saw, a drill, a 1/8″ wood drill bit, 1/4″ and 5/16″ wood boring bits for counter-sinking (you can probably get away with just a 1/4″ bit especially if you’re using pine, which you probably are as it’s usually the cheapest).  You’ll need phillips and robinson screwdrivers or the same type heads for your drill.  A router would be handy but isn’t absolutely necessary.  It should go without saying if you don’t have a variable speed drill don’t use it for driving the screws since they’ll go in way way too fast and you’ll almost certainly split the wood in the process.  A hammer for whacking everything into place would be handy too.

The materials you’ll need (or at least what I used) are two 18″x48″ pine boards.  You could probably get a big 4′x8′ sheet of MDF for about the same price but it probably won’t be quite as sturdy and if you have any other wooden furniture you won’t be able to stain it to match.  Another nice thing about the pine boards is that they are already 18″ deep (actually 17-1/4″) so as long as you don’t have any studio equipment  I had tons of wood screws already but if you don’t have any get a box of 2-1/2″ and 1″ wood screws.  Get them with robinson heads if you can.  Most are.  You can get rack rails all over the place online, even eBay, but if you’re cheap like me you’ll just make them yourself.  A pair of 1/8″ thick 1″x1″x36″ aluminum shelf brackets will work just fine.  Just cut each of them to 21″.  The brackets aren’t really thick enough to thread, so you’ll need to use standard nuts and bolts to mount your equipment.  More on this later.

Building it is the easy part.  The top and bottom pieces should be 19-1/8″ (standard rack width plus 1/16″ on each side for some wiggle room) plus twice the width of your wood, which in my case was 11/16″, so 22/16″ or 11/8″ or 1-3/8″, so 20-1/2″ total.  The sides, for a 12U rack, should be 21″ plus the width of your wood (not twice).  If you want a bigger or smaller rack, just subract or add 1-3/4″.  Just remember this isn’t a metal rack so I wouldn’t recommend going much beyond 12U but you can probably get away with as much as 16U.  If you actually have enough rack mount equipment to fill a 16U rack you probably already have a decent rack or two anyway though :)

Once you’ve cut all the pieces to size, you need to cut the rebates into the top and bottom pieces for the sides to slot into.  Rebates are simply slots cut into the very edges of the top and bottom pieces.  This is where a router is handy but if you don’t have one, just wheel down your table saw blade to half the thickness of your wood and run the pieces through, moving them over about 1/16″ for every pass until you’ve cut out the entire slot.  Once all the pieces are cut to size and your rebates are cut, all that is left is to screw it all together.  I also took one of the leftover pieces and cut two 3″ wide strips to lay along the bottom sides both for extra strength and to mount casters to later if I decide to.  Right now I don’t want casters as it’s going under my mixing console desk but they might be handy later on.  Just for the added strength the extra strips are a good idea anyway and will give your rack some feet so the bottom unit isn’t sitting almost on the floor.

I glued everything together just to keep things together long enough to screw it together and so it wouldn’t fall apart while I was moving it around, but you don’t have to if you’ve got stuff you can just jam against the sides while you’re putting the screws in.  It’s probably a good idea to put something fairly heavy (I used an old monitor) on the top piece while you’re putting the screws in just so the pieces don’t separate while you’re driving in the screws, but if you’ve pre-drilled the screw holes this shouldn’t happen anyway.  You can space the screws however you want just make sure you pre-drill the screw holes with the 1/8″ bit and counter-sink them with the 1/4″ boring  bit.  I used five on each side spacing them more or less evenly.  For the bottom piece, do the exact same thing except if you put the three inch “feet” strips along the edges, it’ll be a lot easier if you glue them in place first, then use the 1″ screws to hold them in place about 3/4″ from the inside edge.  Again, I used five screws with the same spacing.

Once the box is all screwed together, it’s a good idea to put a couple screws in from the other side (from inside the box) if you used the feet.  I only used two, spaced about 3″ from the front/back and 3/4″ from the inside edge, for each.

Now it’s time to install the rails.  Here you should probably decide how far inset you want your equipment to be, if at all, from the front.  Cut the angle brackets to the inside measurement of your box.  For a 12U rack, this will be an even 21″.  To space the holes, the easiest thing to do is just put your equipment in where you plan to put it and trace the holes where they lie, then drill them with a 3/16″ metal bit.  Once the holes are there, epoxy the nuts for your bolts to the back side of the angle bracket even with the hole so bolting your equipment in will be that much easier and removing it will be much easier too.  To attach the rails to the box, use a lot of screws and glue them as well to the inside of the box.  The screws will need to be less than the thickness of your wood.  Since they won’t be that long you’ll need to compensate with volume.  One about every two to four inches should be enough.  Note you’ll also need to counter-sink the holes for your screws since small screws like this usually have large angled heads.  You could also just bolt them in but you’ll have the bolt head showing on the outside.  If you don’t care this is probably easier.  Just don’t forget to use washers!

That’s pretty much it.  Enjoy your new rack.  I’ll attach some pictures to this post tomorrow or when I get a chance.

Our New Family Member

Jun 20

Posted by EarnieShoes in Rabbit trails, Venting and Various Meanderings | No Comments

Rosco 3We’ve been thinking about getting a dog for some time now, and with the passing of Morpheus, our cat, the house seemed a bit too empty.  The time seemed right so we started looking around,doing some research on the internet, deciding on what breeds we were interested in, the usual.  To make a long story short we decided on any mix of Australian Shepherd, Border Collie, Norwegian Elkhound or Australian Cattle Dog.  They’re all intelligent, active breeds and the puppies and cuter than H. E. double hockey sticks :)

A couple days ago online on puppyfinder.com we found a litter of three Australian Cattle Dog mix puppies (they weren’t sure what the father was) that were going to be at an adoption event at the PetSmart in Fairfax last Friday around 7:00PM so off we went after work and sure enough the three cute little puppies were there, and even after my wife falling in love with a different puppy altogether while we were waiting, I managed to drag her over to where the “really adorable” ones had just arrived.  Granted I was a bit pushy in claiming, “yes this is the one, this one right here”, but in the end I think we made the right choice.  It’s pretty obvious the father was a Norwegian Elkhound.  He looks a lot like one with some of the coloring of an Australian Cattle Dog.  That probably means he’s too smart for his own good but that could also be proud owner talking.

Anyway, we’ve spent about a zillion dollars on dog supplies recently so hopefully we’ll have enough money for groceries next week :)

Only 15 months later

Mar 31

Posted by EarnieShoes in Rabbit trails, Venting and Various Meanderings | No Comments

We received a wonderful surprise last Wednesday afternoon.  I received a call from my wife through a chain of phone calls of friends that an XPressPost envelope had arrived at the address of the home of the friends she has been staying with all this time.  There was also the chance the envelope contained a refusal letter so she brought her friend with her when her brother brought her to the post office to pick up and sign for the envelope (nobody was home when they attempted delivery).

As you might have guessed, it was not a refusal letter.  She finally received her immigrant visa after starting the process on January 7th of 2009.  I’ve vented about the process over the last year or so here so I won’t detail the agonizing wait in this post.  Since probably about 3 of the six billion people on this planet actually ever read this blog, it’s more for my record than anything.

One thing I really need to gripe about though is that absolute freaking asshole at the border.  As soon as we pulled up I could tell the guy had a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas.  So be it.  All our documentation was in order and he can act the big shot all he wants.  We’re still crossing.  And we did.  So screw you and the horse your rode in on.  Screw the parents of that horse.  Screw the lineage of the parents of that horse all the way back to the Spanish Conquistadors who let the ancestors of that lineage go wild.  Yes you’re that much of an asshole.  I go home at night knowing at the very least I’ve done a good days work and maybe just contributed in my small way.  I would hate to go home every day knowing I was an absolute prick to every person I came within ten feet of.  Sooner or later you’re going to burn out and there’s going to be nobody there to catch you when you fall because you’ve pissed off absolutely everyone just so you could get off playing mister authority for a few years.  Good for you.  In that I have all the vengeance I need.  Seriously though this guy was over the top asshole.  Even his co-workers were looking at him funny like why the heck was he being such a jerk to everybody.  While we were waiting I think one of his supervisors went out and gave him a talking to.  We couldn’t have been the only ones he was harassing for no reason.  After the much nicer guy showed us where to go to finish processing as he looked back at the border guard from hell as if to say “fuck you’re an asshole, wait ’till I tell the supervisor”, things went much much better.

The lady who processed our thick pack of paperwork that accompanies the visa was the antithesis of our initial contact.  She answered all our questions and didn’t play the Nazi routine at all.  She was polite and helpful, something we weren’t expecting!  Actually pretty much everybody was except for the guy in the booth.  I’d like to vent more about him but it feels just as right to praise the job well done by everybody else at the Alexandria Bay port of entry.  We were in and out in about an hour.

The drive back down to Virginia was pretty uneventful.  It rained most of the way with a couple breaks of sunny weather in Pennsylvania for maybe two hours all tolled.  It was still drizzling when we got home around 11:30PM so we just left everything but the essentials in the car and went inside, let the cat out of jail, gave him something to eat, and went to bed.  The last few days we’ve been getting used to being married for real again.  So far so good :)

Studio moved upstairs

Mar 22

Posted by EarnieShoes in Music Related | No Comments

My cat drinks all the time.  And pees all the time.  When we first moved into the new place last year, the cat decided he would promptly clot up an entire litter box full of litter in one day, then went looking elsewhere to advertise his maleness or just relieve himself.  He first found the rug the drumkit in the studio is sitting on.  He had done it a couple times before I caught him in the lull between actually going into the studio to do anything.  When I finally caught him the damage had been done and once that smell is in a rug forget it it will stink forever.  I tried shampooing it, pet fresh, even airing it out a few times after shampooing.  It doesn’t matter.  The room still stinks.  Cat pee is the most horrible smell that permeates everything and never goes away.  That was one impetus for moving the studio upstairs into what would be considered the living room.  The other impetus was just being sick and tired of working in such a small space, while the living room sits virtually empty and unused as I’m alone in the house right now.

Now that everything is out of the room, the rug in the trash bin, and the floor thoroughly cleaned with lots of amonia and aired out to boot as last weekend was unusually pleasant and all the windows in the house got opened up and the house given a breath of fresh air, the room finally smells nice again.  No matter what you do no matter how hard you try, that smell just freaking will not go away without cleaning and cleaning and cleaning.  I hate cats.  My wife likes our cat.  So I make the sacrifice.  If he pees on the rug in the living room though, he’s dead.  Period.

The basement provides much better sound insulation and I’ll continue hauling the fancy recording microphones downstairs when it’s time to record vocals or whatever.  I’ll probably have to watch the sound level a bit more carefully now that the studio speakers are upstairs with less insulation between the workstation and the outside world but it’s a reasonable compromise.  I can always take a play out of the wife’s playbook and use heavy blankets to deaden the sound where I might be annoying others or the outside world is annoying me.  In a perfect world it would be nice to have a large basement room dedicated to a full blown recording studio but right now I don’t have the funds for that so the living room will have to do for now.  It’s just a hobby until I get signed anyway :)